Surprise, Surprise only one Irish family gave up their child benefit
Its no surprise that only one family handed back their child benefit to the State in the past 12 months.
The payment was in respect of one child, which amounts to €1,560 in a full year, according to the Department of Social Protection.
In 2013 three families opted to hand back the money, which was formerly called children’s allowance.
A department spokesperson said the payments returned by the three last year were in respect of four children and amounted to €6,420
MILLIONAIREs
Three families also surrendered the payment in 2012 in respect of three children, saving the State €5,040.
Figures published last July showed that one in every 40 people living in Dublin is classed as a millionaire, but it appears child benefit is a payment that even the rich do not want to give up.
It was announced in last month’s Budget that the rate of child benefit will increase by €5 to €135 a month for each child from next month, taking the annual payment to €1,620.
For two children, the rate rises from €260 to €270 a month, amounting to €3,240 a year.
Parents can opt to waive the payment simply by writing to the Department of Social Protection.
The State will shell out €1.97bn in child benefit next year, with 613,000 families getting the benefit of the €5 hike.
Meanwhile, a second increase in child benefit will be introduced in 2016 if the current rate economic growth continues.
However, Tanaiste Joan Burton has warned that this cannot be guaranteed.
While insisting that she is “confident” the pledge can be honoured, the Labour leader said she “cannot commit to or make very significant promises”.
Child benefit is not means- tested. It is a universal system to help all families with the cost of raising children.
However, this means high earners will continue to be paid almost €1,600 a year for each child.
UPC to enable blocking of internet content from March
Opt-in facility means restrictions would be requested by individual customers
UPC said the move to allow customers block content reflects the wishes and concerns of parents who responded to a survey.
Nearly a third of Irish internet users will soon be offered a new service blocking inappropriate web content from their homes.
Internet service provider UPC has said the move is in response to overwhelming consumer demand and should be in place for its 350,000 customers from March.
The vast majority of parents told the company in a survey they were concerned about unsuitable content and the company believe that in a “brave new world of technology” the customers’ concerns must be paramount.
“It isn’t really based on any political or lobbying agenda but what we have heard from our customers. It’s an area in which we have been very much engaged with over the last few years in terms of child protection,” said Mark Coan, director of marketing and sales.
“The main thing that we are hearing is that parents are trying to get an appropriate level of access in the home. There appears to be a clear demand for it, particularly in the family segment.”
Customers will be contacted to inform them of the service once it is up and running but it will be an opt-in facility only, meaning any content restriction would effectively be requested by individual consumers rather than imposed.
Based on an existing UK model, a third party company compiles and maintains a database of websites deemed unsuitable and the router blocks access.
According to research conducted by UPC, the average amount of devices in the home that can access the internet is now 4.7, doubling every four years. Mr Coan said 92 per cent of households liked the idea of a tool to control access, although only just over half actually installed any software. A further 97 per cent said they were worried their children had access to inappropriate material.
“It’s a brave new world in terms of technology so we are trying to listen to our customers,” he said.
It is a significant development and one that could propel other service providers to follow suit. UPC has over 50 per cent market share of fixed national broadband in major urban areas, with 29 per cent nationally, compared to Eircom’s 36.9 per cent and Vodafone’s 16.9 per cent.
However, while content is blocked, Mr Coan said it should not be considered an issue of censorship.
“I think we are very aware of our responsibilities in that area. It’s very much an opt-in only service so by making it based on individual consumer choice I think we have met the needs for consumers if they need it but also avoid any potential implications of censorship,” he said.
“The nature of this service is very much optional because what we wanted to do is have something where people can opt-in. They can go to their online account and press a button and that will filter out any inappropriate content for minors.”
Don Myers, president of the National Parents Council (post primary) said the initiative is a welcome move in the right direction but cautioned that when it comes to internet related concerns, cyber-bullying remained the outstanding issue today.
New roadside drug tests will save many lives in Ireland
Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe said new roadside drug tests will save lives.
Minister Donohoe’s comments come as the Gardaí and Road Safety Authority take part in a major clampdown on drug and drink-driving.
The new laws introducing the blood and impairment tests came into force at the end of last month – and the festive season will mark their first major outing.
Paschal Donohoe said he was confident gardaí will enforce the laws properly.
“I’m absolutely certain the Gardaí will be able to implement this test in line with their own high standards of professionalism,” he said. “Gardaí have been at the centre of successfully reducing the loss of life and serious injuries on our roads.”
Cregg House therapeutic garden class grows well for students & plants
Some of the service users pictured above at Cregg House, Sligo who take part in the therapeutic gardening programme, showing off their Christmas wreaths.
They say working in the garden, helping plants grow, can be very therapeutic. At Cregg House in Ballincar that theory has been put in to practise with up to 20 service users taking part in a horticultural therapy programme run by Project Adrian’s Trust (P.A.T).
Kathy Pearse, originally from the US but living in Calry, Sligo, for about 43 years, helped set up P.A.T in 2008 to start the gardening skills programme which aims to benefit adults with autism and disability.
She said: “I had a friend whose son Adrian was autistic and a Cregg House service user. Cregg House went through a difficult time before it was taken over by the HSE over a year ago. There’s around 200 service users, all have intellectual disability but others have physical too. There’s people with severe autism like Adrian who is 32 years old and living in a house with other service users in Drumcliffe.”
“There were a lot of adults who were attending Cregg House for years but there wasn’t lots for them to do. We set up the trust and then started looking for a horticultural therapist, someone who has experience with people with disabilities and teaching gardening skills to them. There are up to 20 in the programme. It’s very therapeutic working with the garden. They find it very soothing and stimulating at the same time.”
The programme uses plant related activities to not only educate but also improve social interaction and motor skills, boost self-esteem, and provide opportunities for problem solving. It is taught by Helen McCauley, from Strandhill, who trained in the Organic Centre in Rossinver, Leitrim. She takes participants, in groups of one or two and often with the help of a care assistant, to learn gardening in a polytunnel on the grounds of Cregg House.
Kathy said: “Helen has been a great addition to the service. They go out into the garden and really enjoy themselves working with the soil. The programme has expanded a bit. A chalet was built so that they could go in there and continue the programme in bad weather and have a cup of tea. They called in Diggers’ Den. We hope to get more funding to continue and expand the service even more.”
5,200 Days in Space
An exploration of life aboard the International Space Station, and the surprising reasons the mission is still worthwhile
When humans move to space, we are the aliens, the extraterrestrials. And so, living in space, the oddness never quite goes away. Consider something as elemental as sleep.
In 2009, with the expansive International Space Station nearing completion after more than a decade of orbital construction, astronauts finally installed some staterooms on the U.S. side—four private cubicles about the size of airplane lavatories.
That’s where the NASA astronauts sleep, in a space where they can close a folding door and have a few hours of privacy and quiet, a few hours away from the radio, the video cameras, the instructions from Mission Control. Each cabin is upholstered in white quilted material and equipped with a sleeping bag tethered to an inside wall. When an astronaut is ready to sleep, he climbs into the sleeping bag.
“The biggest thing with falling asleep in space,” says Mike Hopkins, who returned from a six-month tour on the Space Station last March, “is kind of a mental thing. On Earth, when I’ve had a long day, when I’m mentally and physically tired—when you first lie down on your bed, there’s a sense of relief.
You get a load off your feet. There’s an immediate sense of relaxation. In space, you never feel that. You never have that feeling of taking weight off your feet—or that emotional relief.” Some astronauts miss it enough that they bungee-cord themselves to the wall, to provide a sense of lying down.
Sleep position presents its own challenges. The main question is whether you want your arms inside or outside the sleeping bag. If you leave your arms out, they float free in zero gravity, often drifting out from your body, giving a sleeping astronaut the look of a wacky ballet dancer. “I’m an inside guy,” Hopkins says. “I like to be cocooned up.”
Hopkins says he didn’t have unusual dreams in space, although now, back on Earth, he does occasionally dream of floating through the station. “I wish I dreamed every night of floating,” he says. “I wish I could recapture that.”
Spaceflight has faded from American consciousness even as our performance in space has reached a new level of accomplishment. In the past decade, America has become a truly, permanently spacefaring nation. All day, every day, half a dozen men and women, including two Americans, are living and working in orbit, and have been since November 2000. Mission Control in Houston literally never sleeps now, and in one corner of a huge video screen there, a counter ticks the days and hours the Space Station has been continuously staffed. The number is rounding past 5,200 days.
It’s a little strange when you think about it: Just about every American ninth-grader has never lived a moment without astronauts soaring overhead, living in space. But chances are, most ninth-graders don’t know the name of a single active astronaut—many don’t even know that Americans are up there. We’ve got a permanent space colony, inaugurated a year before the setting of the iconic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s a stunning achievement, and it’s completely ignored.
As a culture, we remain fascinated by the possibilities, discoveries, of space travel. The 2013 movie Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, brought in $716 million at the box office and won seven Academy Awards. But we seem indifferent to what is happening in reality all the time now. Without any fanfare, we have slipped into the era of Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.
We just know the fictional characters better than the real ones. Perhaps that’s unsurprising. The Space Station is an engineering marvel, but all it seems to do is soar in circles—a fresh sunrise every 92 minutes. Scientific research on the station hasn’t yielded any noteworthy breakthroughs, and daily life there, thankfully, lacks the drama of a movie script.
But all of that does the station and its astronauts a disservice: The details and challenges of life in space are weird and arresting, revealing and valuable. In them, one can begin to make out a greater purpose for the station’s 82,000 manned orbits—even if it’s not the one NASA seems to be pursuing.
The International Space Station is a vast outpost—as long as a football field, as big inside as a six-bedroom house. (NASA)
The International Space Station is a vast outpost, its scale inspiring awe even in the astronauts who have constructed it. From the edge of one solar panel to the edge of the opposite one, the station stretches the length of a football field, including the end zones. The station weighs nearly 1 million pounds, and its solar arrays cover more than an acre.
It’s as big inside as a six-bedroom house, more than 10 times the size of a space shuttle’s interior. Astronauts regularly volunteer how spacious it feels. It’s so big that during the early years of three-person crews, the astronauts would often go whole workdays without bumping into one another, except at mealtimes. Indeed, it’s so big, you can see it tracing across the night sky when it passes overhead (there are apps for finding it, ISS Spotter among them).
The station is a joint operation: half American, half Russian, with each nation managing its own side of the craft (the U.S. side includes modules or equipment from Canada, Japan, and Europe, and typically a visiting astronaut from one of those places). Navigation responsibilities and operation of the station’s infrastructure are shared, and the role of station commander alternates between a cosmonaut and an astronaut. The Russian and U.S.-side astronauts typically keep to their own modules during the workday. But the crews often gather for meals and hang out together after work.
As a facility, a spacecraft, and a habitation, the station is most comparable to a ship. It has its own personality, its own charms and quirks. Crew members come and go, bringing their own style, but the station itself imposes a certain rhythm and tone. It has a more sophisticated water-recycling system than any on Earth. An astronaut who mixes up an orange drink for breakfast on Monday morning and urinates on Monday afternoon can use that same water, newly purified, to mix a fresh drink on Thursday. Yet the station lacks a refrigerator or freezer for food (there is a freezer for science experiments), and while the food is much better than it was 20 years ago, most of it’s still vacuum-packed or canned. The arrival of a few oranges on a cargo ship every couple of months is cause for jubilation.
On the station, the ordinary becomes peculiar. The exercise bike for the American astronauts has no handlebars. It also has no seat. With no gravity, it’s just as easy to pedal furiously, feet strapped in, without either. You can watch a movie while you pedal by floating a laptop anywhere you want. But station residents have to be careful about staying in one place too long. Without gravity to help circulate air, the carbon dioxide you exhale has a tendency to form an invisible cloud around your head. You can end up with what astronauts call a carbon-dioxide headache. (The station is equipped with fans to help with this problem.)
Since the station’s first components were launched, 216 men and women have lived there, and NASA has learned a lot about how to live in space—about the difference between rocketing into zero‑G for two weeks and settling in for months at a time. Day-to-day life in space is nothing like the sleek, improvisational world that TV and movie directors have created. It is more thrilling and dangerous than we earthlings appreciate, and also more choreographed and mundane.
Often those qualities coexist in the very same experience, such as spacewalking. Space is a brittle and unforgiving place—a single thoughtless maneuver can trigger disaster.NASA has reduced the risk by scripting almost everything, from the replacement of a water filter to the safety checks on a space suit. In 54 years of flying humans in space, NASA has suffered three fatal spacecraft accidents that killed a total of 17 people—the Apollo 1 capsule fire in 1967, the Challenger shuttle disaster in 1986, and the Columbia shuttle disaster in 2003. But none of those resulted from any error on the part of the astronauts. The meticulous scripting can make watching the astronauts at work boring, but NASA knows that excitement means mistakes.
Even by the low estimates, it costs $350,000 an hour to keep the station flying, which makes astronauts’ time an exceptionally expensive resource—and explains their relentless scheduling: Today’s astronauts typically start work by 7:30 in the morning, Greenwich Mean Time, and stop at 7 o’clock in the evening. They are supposed to have the weekends off, but Saturday is devoted to cleaning the station—vital, but no more fun in orbit than housecleaning down here—and some work inevitably sneaks into Sunday.
